Carnegie Lecture Archive

As Carl Sagan once said, "We are made of star stuff." However, each element has its own astronomical origins story. Elements are created everywhere from the centers of stars, to supernovae...

Looking upward, the vastness of the heavens is accessible through giant telescopes that collect light from the beginning of time. Turn a telescope downward and the opaqueness of our planet...

Can we use the ocean without using it up? The task is daunting given current trajectories in fisheries, plastics, and other pollutants, and the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification. ...

From the work of luminaries Edwin Hubble and Vera Rubin to the recent detection of a neutron star merger and the discovery of the most-distant black hole, Carnegie scientists have played a central...

How and when did life originate on Earth? How many other Earth-like planets exist in our Solar
System and universe?

From the beginnings of recorded history, humans have had a...

A little over 50 years ago, the theory of plate tectonics emerged to provide a unifying theory for the dynamic behavior of the solid Earth as expressed by earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain building...

Charles Darwin said evolution was too slow to be observed, but modern studies have corrected this assertion. The Grants will discuss their decades of work studying Darwin’s finches on the...

The great challenge of our time is to build and nurture sustainable communities, designed in such a manner that their ways of life, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with...

If you enjoyed this summer’s spectacular total solar eclipse, you have the Moon to thank for it! But Earth’s only natural satellite and closest cosmic neighbor does a lot more than occasionally...

We all live on a planet, and planets represent the best places to look for life elsewhere in the universe. This makes planets uniquely interesting objects, both for astronomers, and for everyone...

Volcanic eruptions pose an increasing threat to human lives and...

How do we find planets orbiting stars other than our Sun? How do we know what they’re made of, or if they’re Earth-like?  Dr. Teske will discuss how exoplanets’ composition is “inherited” from...

The formation of galaxies like our Milky Way involves gravity, dark matter, gases, star formation, and stellar explosions. Theoretical astrophysics is now revealing this complex process by using...

Supernovae are cosmic explosions where a single star can become as bright as a billion stars combined. Even though supernovae are crucial to the Universe, including producing the elements...

Since releasing its first images of space 5 years ago, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has produced many exciting and fundamental results, enabling...

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